


you left me in a heartbeat

by jaystrifes



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Dancing, Internalized Homophobia, Joey Drew is "Bendy" | Ink Bendy, M/M, alternative ending, bad end?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 10:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17979542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/jaystrifes
Summary: "The music was still playing, and a cartoon had started to roll on screen. It was the one based on their dance from that night, but Henry couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was called.He watched, almost transfixed; the gist was that Bendy wanted one romantic slow dance with Alice, who had been an unnamed cameo character at the time, a full demon rather than the angel Joey would later re-conceptualize her as. Other characters swept her away for fun rag-timey jigs, leading Bendy to sabotage them with various and somewhat violent pranks until he was the only contender left for Alice’s hand. It ended with Alice rejecting him a final time, leaving him standing alone in the spotlight on the stage with a hurt and sad expression."





	you left me in a heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> I literally finished this way back in October to post before Chapter 5's release, and then forgot about it.

Henry should have made a beeline for the exit as soon as he reached the top of the stairs and, finally, found himself back on the first floor. He should have beaten the door down with an axe and gotten the hell out of Joey Drew Studios.

Instead he had hesitated, overcome with the realization that he would never walk these halls again. Memories of the studio’s halcyon days washed over him: his and Joey’s long, long nights of sketching and talking and dreaming (more sketching on Henry’s part, more talking and dreaming on Joey’s), the warm glow of the light over his desk, the occasional passing voices of the few other employees on their way to the few other departments.

Everything back then was so much smaller, so much closer—the levels Henry had seen below were unrecognizable to him, even when he tried to conjure up the image of Joey madly scheming to make them happen. Theme parks and toy factories and _human sacrifice_ , those had all seemed beyond even Joey’s wildest imaginings before Henry had witnessed them for himself.

He had to get out of here and never come back. It wasn’t safe to linger any longer.

Then again, perhaps it wasn’t even safe to leave. There was no telling what might follow him, and the things he had seen couldn’t be allowed to enter the outside world. Whatever he had set into motion when he turned on the Ink Machine, he had to undo it.

As soon as the notion crossed Henry’s mind, he knew it was going to get him killed, but then again, he had only returned to the studio in the first place because he had nothing left to lose.

So he turned his back on freedom and headed for the Projector Room. He was going to retrace his steps: first, switching off the ink pressure. Henry tried the lever and pulled with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge. Maybe some kind of tool would help. Hell, if he could find an axe, he would smash the whole system to bits with nothing but the blade and his bare fists.

Distantly, there was a thump. And another thump. A slow, familiar, pulsing rhythm; a heartbeat.

Henry felt his own heart attempt a flying leap out of his throat.

If he stayed where he was, he'd be trapped. There was nowhere to hide here, no more miracles; he had to run and hope he could navigate the maze of doors and halls better than the Ink Demon could.

Henry had barely set foot outside the door when the web of black tendrils unfurled across the walls, and there, to his left, he glimpsed the abominable likeness of Bendy. Quickly, he ducked back into the room, pressed himself flat to the wall, and prayed he hadn’t been detected. If he stayed stone-still, didn’t dare to even breathe, maybe—

No, there was no chance Bendy would just _pass by_. His darkness drew ever closer. Ink dripped from the ceiling, seeped from the wall, rolling down to cling to Henry’s already thoroughly stained shirt. There had to be something he could do besides stand here and wait. He didn’t hear any movement; now was his chance.

Henry stepped away from the wall, turned around, and discovered Bendy leering over him in the doorway. He tripped backwards with a yell, but the noise strangled itself in his throat as he scrambled in a desperate crab walk, trying to put distance between himself and the demon. Somehow, he made it behind the two rows of chairs, and Bendy still hadn’t crouched to attack the way he always did.

In fact, he had done nothing more than turn his head in Henry’s direction and stand there with his rictus expression, his breath whistling through his teeth. It was a new sound, or if not new, then simply one Henry hadn’t ever paid attention to before, on account of being busy running for his life every time the Ink Demon found him. Now the time for running was over.

Henry tried to calm his ragged breathing, holding one hand to his side where a sudden ache had bloomed. He’d gotten more exercise in the studio than he’d had in years, but he was still an old man, and shock, tension, and strenuous acrobatic attempts to escape Bendy made for a bad combination.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded.

Nothing. Just the same grin, and the raining ink, and the ever-present heartbeat. Darkness wove itself into tangled cobwebs, pulsing throughout the whole room.

A sudden dizzy spell hit, a flash of orange across his vision. Henry grabbed onto a chair to keep himself steady and shook it off. It happened again, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to avoid the images that had forced themselves on him before, the hands reaching out for him to save them. He feared those more than he feared the literal demon standing in the room with him.

No attack came while he was off guard. The only thing that had changed, when he opened his eyes, was that Bendy had drawn closer to the chairs. If he stretched out his long, skeletal arm, he could touch Henry’s face.

Henry figured he should be afraid, shaking, outlining his last words, but his initial panic had dissipated. More than anything, he was tired. Only God knew how long he’d been trapped here; he was ready for this nightmare to end, one way or another.

Light and shadow flashed across his eyes again, and this time, he didn’t fight it. Music kicked up, though he couldn’t tell if it was part of his horror vision or not. And the hallucination this time didn’t actually seem to be so horrific—it was just a sepia-tinted memory, playing like a film reel in first person.

A familiar man stood before him, tall and lanky in suspenders and coffee-stained dress shirt. Though he wore his black hair combed and slicked back, it was already falling into disarray, odd strands sticking out here and there and brushing his forehead. He had a pencil mustache, and the brightest blue eyes. The first thought that crossed his mind when he first met Joey Drew, he remembered, was that no man should have eyes like that, so charismatic and mesmerizing and downright pretty, full of beautiful dreams and unwavering belief.

Henry heard his own voice, though he wasn’t speaking.  _“Okay, Joey, but this is the last all-nighter I can pull. I have to go home sometime, you know.”_

_“I know, I know. It’s just that—”_

The next words skipped, like a scratched record. Another vision replaced that one—he and Joey again, standing in this very spot in the Projector Room. They had set up a camera to record from the hallway. It was for an upcoming cartoon that involved dancing, and Henry had argued it would be too difficult and time-consuming to animate without proper reference. Even with proper reference, it would be difficult and time-consuming. But Joey refused to scrap the idea. Henry had done “The Dancing Demon” after all, and it was a huge hit.

The difference was that only Bendy needed to dance in that short. Joey’s new idea called for multiple partner dances between many characters, all happening in the same scene. His solution to Henry’s concerns was this: filming a dance between them so that Henry would have a suitable reference. Sammy had already laid down the music, at Joey’s special request, so they were able to put the phonograph on to time their steps, though it wouldn’t be heard on the silent film.

They had rehearsed the routine thoroughly enough that both were comfortable with it (always leading to all-nighters, Henry’s promise to Linda be damned, because nobody else stayed in the studio after hours), but being on film made things feel somehow different. Henry was as embarrassed as he had been when Joey first proposed the idea. He’d gotten used to dancing with him over time, even in the following role, but that night he was acutely aware of Joey in a way that he had always carefully skirted in the past.

Every point of contact felt too-warm, even through his clothes—Joey’s hand on his arm as he flung Henry around for the swing parts, on his waist when he dipped him in the slow-dance finale. For a man with a bad leg, Joey Drew made an exceptional dancer. Henry certainly couldn’t have asked for a better partner. And they were just two friends, dancing for work purposes, so why did the exhilarating closeness of it leave him with his head in the clouds?

 _“You can let go of me now,”_ Henry had said, but Joey remained with his hands resting on Henry’s waist, Henry’s hands on his shoulders.

It wasn’t appropriate, Henry was _married_ for goodness’ sake, married to a woman because that was the way it should be—but it would be a lie to say that some repressed part of him didn’t want this more than anything.

He swallowed around his dry tongue and murmured,  _“We’re out of film, but I think we got what we needed.”_

Smiling his brilliant smile, Joey asked,  _“Did you have fun?”_

 _“I—”_ That was the other thing about Joey. He knew exactly how to catch Henry off-guard, and Henry always had a hard time being dishonest with him.  _“It wasn’t as terrible an idea as I thought it was when we first started.”_

Joey tilted his head in that knowing way of his, with that unyielding determination in his eyes that would pry the truth out of Henry one way or another.  _“That’s not the answer to the question I asked, old pal.”_

Before Henry could say anything, Joey’s knee had buckled. Henry followed him to the floor, catching him under the arms and helping him to the chair at the desk, and the pleasant illusion was gone.

Coming out of the warmth of the vision to the reality of the room around him, the dust motes and the musty air and the cold presence of the Ink Demon, was like being splashed in the face with ice water. Henry took a deep breath.

The music was still playing, and a cartoon had started to roll on screen. It was the one based on their dance from that night, but Henry couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was called.

He watched, almost transfixed; the gist was that Bendy wanted one romantic slow dance with Alice, who had been an unnamed cameo character at the time, a full demon rather than the angel Joey would later re-conceptualize her as. Other characters swept her away for fun rag-timey jigs, leading Bendy to sabotage them with various and somewhat violent pranks until he was the only contender left for Alice’s hand. It ended with Alice rejecting him a final time, leaving him standing alone in the spotlight on the stage with a hurt and sad expression.

This short was one of the last he ever worked on with Joey. As Henry had predicted, it was time-consuming, and time-consuming meant money-consuming. Things got too tight at the studio, too contentious with Joey’s stubborn pride sparking arguments in every department.

While his unwillingness to compromise had never made him the easiest person to work with, the onset of post-polio changed him into someone he wasn’t. That spark in his eyes grew dim, and at some point he stopped truly believing in his dream. Bendy became just a drawing on a page, animated solely by hand without any of the life Joey had once breathed into him.

Joey kept up a powerfully optimistic facade for everyone else, but Henry saw the worst side of him, the Joey that threw bottles of ink at his office wall and smashed them to pieces on the floor, the Joey that yelled and swore and tore up sheets of sketches they had worked hard on together.

It became routine. Joey broke things until Henry calmed him down, let Joey hold onto him for support, sat with him afterwards in a quiet occasionally broken only by Joey’s breath shuddering around a sob. Joey at the peak of his despair was also Joey at his most vulnerable. So much so that he had kissed Henry once, kissed him like it was a natural thing for two men to do, like it was the inevitable result of time and magnetism and all the other reasonable forces in the world. And maybe it was.

Shortly after that, though, Henry left under the pretext of looking for a more stable job. He had a family to provide for, and unacceptable feelings that it was best to forget about, even though they were clearly reciprocated. Even though that was when Joey needed him most.

A hand on Henry’s shoulder startled him out of his own memories. The deformed, inky claw of a hand belonging to the Ink Demon. The other one found Henry’s waist. The massive height difference made it seem so strange at first that Henry couldn’t tell what the demon was doing—then it hit him. Bendy wanted to dance.

Was it because of the cartoon? But as far as Henry knew, this Bendy couldn’t see at all, so he couldn’t be copying what was on the screen.

Henry didn’t know what to do. He had a feeling that trying to run wouldn’t be a good idea. So, what then? It seemed like his only option was to go along with this. Hesitantly, he moved Bendy’s hand from his waist and put their palms together, extended from their bodies, while their other arms braced around each other’s backs.

It was awkward to move, not even considering the fact that Bendy was a slightly too tall monster, but they eventually found a rhythm in their steps. There was something about it that tickled the back of Henry’s mind, but he couldn’t place the strange feeling of deja vu at first.

The familiarity of the dance slowly became apparent—it _was_ the one from the cartoon, or at least part of it. A part that he had originally danced with…

“Joey?”

Bendy’s horns swivelled immediately. His expression didn’t change, still stuck in that same frozen grin, but a breath whispered between his teeth. He didn’t stop turning and guiding Henry in slow patterns across the floor. The music played on, the sad horn and the backing piano, even though the projector showed only white light now.

“How did you—?” Henry asked, barely comprehending the connection even after he had made it. He knew now, but it didn’t feel real. How could it be real?

Another disorienting flash set before him three images: a wheelchair, the Machine, and the Ink Demon. He’d seen this before, but it wasn’t until that moment that he fully understood it. Joey’s deteriorating health, his descent into madness, his desperation strong enough to turn him towards the occult.

Even with the demon’s arm around him, Henry thought he might collapse. “Joey,” he said again, an unexpected hoarseness in his throat. His cheeks felt wet.

What could he say? What could he _do_? The man who had been his dearest friend, who had almost been something more than that, was now this, a monstrous chimera of man and something wholly unnatural, something that didn’t belong in this world. There was no telling how much of the real Joey was left in there, but Henry suspected it was just barely enough to recognize his name when Henry had said it, and enough to remember the steps to their dance.

Henry let his head drop forward to rest against the Ink Demon’s chest, heaving with its labored breathing. Whatever Joey had been trying to do, it had to have gone terribly wrong for him to end up with this twisted mess of a body, more functional than his previous one only in that it could walk.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Joey, please, if you can hear me—I’m so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I let this happen to you. I should have been there, I should have stayed, I should’ve…”

A fresh wave of dizziness hit him, made him pause and slur his words mid-sentence. It felt different from the way his visions always came to him. There was no orange light, no pressure in his ears, just a sense of heaviness, like he was falling asleep. Darkness encroached in his peripheral sight.

“Joey,” he said, struggling to get his sluggish mouth to move. “I have to…save you…”

Henry couldn’t hold his eyes open, but before he could topple over, he felt himself being picked up and carried. Consciousness flowed over him one last time and retreated like a tide going out to sea. Finally, almost deliriously, he remembered the song that played in the short he had watched, the one that had given it its title. He remembered Joey reading it to him for the first time, before their first dance.

_You left me in a heartbeat._

Beneath the slow rhythm of Bendy’s pulse, the music faded away in the distance, and the mechanical chugging of the Ink Machine drew nearer.

**Author's Note:**

> If the ending was unclear, it sorta goes off of that old theory that Henry, as the True Creator, could be used to create a Perfect Bendy, and that Joey as "Bendy" intended to sacrifice him/fuse with him to achieve that. 
> 
> Anyways, consider it an alt ending in which Henry never learns about the timeloop, or Joey's responsibility for trapping him in the studio. Joey's still pretty terrible, but not knowing that, all Henry wanted was to save himself and his "old pal" too.


End file.
